This invention relates generally to furniture and more particularly to collapsible furniture commonly known as "knock-down" furniture.
Collapsible/knock-down furniture is usually constructed of plywood or other planar material. Each piece interlocks with another through the use of hooks and slots or simple extensions and slots. Once the pieces are assembled and interlocked, an article of furniture is created which is extremely sturdy and durable.
The planar nature of the components make knock-down or collapsible furniture ideal for temporary use permitting the disassembled unit to be easily and conveniently stored between uses.
Examples of such furniture include desks, picnic tables, chairs, rocking chairs, and the like.
The advantage of such furniture is twofold: (i) they are relatively inexpensive to manufacture; and, more importantly (ii) the disassembled unit is easy to store due to the planar nature of the components which take up little space when placed parallel to each other.
Although great strides and tremendous innovation have been devoted relative both in the creation of the furniture itself and in novel ways to lock the various pieces together as a final piece of furniture, little has been done relative to the storage aspect of the disassembled pieces.
As noted above, collapsible or knock-down furniture typically is stored until it is actually put in use. This means not only the placement of the disassembled unit in a convenient location, but also the transportation of the disassembled unit to the place of use.
Traditionally, the owner keeps the original cardboard shipping box or other such container for use in storing and transporting the disassembled unit. As time passes and the cardboard box is used more, it becomes less and less secure, eventually ripping and permitting the contents to be lost or strewn about.
In some situations, a separate wooden box accompanies the disassembled unit and is used for the sole purpose of storing the unit when it is not in use.
It is clear from the forgoing that either solution is not ideal and that an efficient solution to the storage and/or transportation problems does not exist.